Stop Giving Well (Where Effective Altruism Fails)

A critique of the application of Peter Singer's Effective Altruism. I argue that the charities that Give Well, Giving What We Can, and The Life You Can Save, promote actually do more harm than good, by keeping populations dependent, economically weak, and slaves to the whims of international donors. I live in Africa and I have seen how ineffective, "Effective" Altruism is.

Sponsors: Prince Otchere, Daniel Helland, Dennis Sexton, Will Roberts and √2. Thanks for your support!

Video Guide:
Intro: 00:00
Singer’s Position 01:58
Singer’s Argument 07:08
Objections: 11:00
Objection 1: Jobs and Economics 13:53
Objection 2: Freedom and Choice 25:56
Objection 3: Dependency 35:58
Conclusion: 44:54

Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more!

Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more!

[davidpiepgrass]

Odd, I'm a member of Effective Altruism, have been reading lots of lectures/articles by EA and 80, 000 Hours, and don't remember it ever being treated as some sort of universal duty to be an Effective Altruist. I treat it as my duty to try to do the most good I can - but that's MY CHOICE, not something that came from Peter Singer (I was already giving 10% of my income to charity long before I heard of EA). The video also says charities are judged "According to Singer" - not at all. This movement is so vastly bigger than one man. There is plenty of debate within the movement about how to do the most good and how to measure good-ness, and NO ONE is saying that GiveWell's recommendations are unequivocally the best - the most we could say is "these are the best according to the evidence presently available to us".

[emmaabele]

You seem to be spreading a lot of misconceptions about EA with this video. I don't blame you becuase EA is really hard to fully understand. I've spent about 1000 hours learning about it and am still finding important new things to learn!

It's unfortunate that EA can be oversimplified and then offputting in the ways you describe to people new to EA.

This talk is from an EA conference encouraging people to avoid such oversimplification:

[vulnerablegrowth]

GiveWell suggests donating to GiveDirectly. GiveDirectly is for direct cash transfers to poor individuals in Kenya and Uganda. This lets the people in the community decide what they do with their money. Donate to them if you are against using science and reason to decide what poor people need.

Also, the Open Philanthropy Project was incubated at GiveWell and one of their goals is to look for giving opportunities for the longer term. For example, they recently gave 2.5 million to the MILA Institute in order to study the potential risks from AI and what we can do to prevent any possible catastrophes that could come out of it.

Not all EAs think exactly the same, but they are reasonable enough to modify their giving efforts or volunteer time if it means doing good better. EA is always open to criticism and change in order to improve.

[Nirvana]

Thanks for this interesting presentation! But even after reflection, I do not see why all these arguments you bring up would make a case against effective altruism as such. Instead, I have the feeling that EA can easily incorporate them (and already tries to do so...). A few examples:
- An effective aid NGO (maybe in contrast to an average one, I admit it) will always try to buy its resources and equipment locally. In your example, the NGO would try to find the net-producer locally and buy as many nets as possible there. Only after that, the NGO would buy the rest of the nets elsewhere. This protects local jobs and makes aid accessible. The World Food Program for example buys 80% of its supplies locally.
- Even if I fully agree that it is extremely important to consult the population, I do not see how anyone could be against the (easy and effective) prevention of a dangerous disease like Malaria. I live and work myself in West Africa (more precisely in Senegal) and I have never seen so far anyone who objects the distribution of nets. Furthermore, If an American NGO came into my home country (Belgium) to sensitize about the prevention of the flue (which, as I have learned, kills more people than I have thought), I would say: "Please, go ahead!". Obviously, they would not recommend eating alone in a tent, because this is simply not effective (which by definition is the primary concern of EA). But there are certainly more effective ways in preventing the flue!
- The most powerful argument I could find in your presentation is the dependency argument. But again, I believe that an effective organization takes account of this risk and will do everything necessary to avoid it (I am not saying that they always succeed of course...).
In sum, I think your positions are too simplistic. Rather than being constructive and helping to build up effective NGOs that could integrate your criticism, you seem to prefer a black-or-white view, where effectiveness will always be on the black side. This became best visible to me when – after claiming how important choice is – you say that Give Directly is not good neither after all, because people use the money for consumption instead of investment (which already is not true). So after all, they do not know what is best for them? Black and white…

[alexamadams]

Great video and huge fan of Moyo’s work.

It’s worrying that so many comments seem to be from EA’s who are focused on disputing your arguments without wholly listening to them or validating any kind of criticism.

I feel this movement hides behind the idea of “science” when the reality is that they are no more “scientific” than other philosophical or religious groups. Especially with the emergence on longtermism within the movement, it makes more sense to see EA as a social control group with deference given to high net worth individuals and charismatic leaders.

[torcoAaAa]

afair singer actually cares about impact, not overhead... I've heard him say explicitly that overhead cost percentage is a shit metric for ascertaining whether an organisation is good to donate

[smashing]

You are working with a lot tough assumptions but are not necessarily true. i) why are you assuming that the nets will be foreigner and the nets that would have been bought by the locals would be local nets? ii) why are you assuming that the net business would be a high-barrier to entry business? why would they simply not enter the market again when prices rise? iii) why are assuming that people who would get out of work (if any) would remain unemployed?

[brennanhudson]

Isn't there a way to do both at the same time? Like to stop the immediate suffering yet set the people up to set themselves up, but also set them up initially so they are properly set up, but can set themselves up and fix their set up in the future...
like stop the suffering that would be caused by malaria, but at the same time help them develop thier own education and infrastructure and have discussions . Surely there is a place for both and a work around so that we can do all of it? We are flexible and let's not get stuck in terms of words and how shit has to be, like economics. They need sustainable and eco friendly developent and healthy food and I have no idea how that can happen . And clean water.
Since u are involved in international developent, and this is something I am very very interested in, what is the balance between environmental friendly development and traditional economic systems and methods of development? Also like do the communities want capitalism or more socialist ways of living?

[skepticalJones]

Did you read "Doing Good Better?" Will MacAskill has a section on Dambisa Moyo and aid effectiveness.

[debblouin]

From where does Singer derive his conception of morality, good, evil, and duty? How does Singer deal with consequences of donating to organizations who operate in countries rife with corruption, war, etc?

[debblouin]

Singer’s philosophy doesn’t want economic growth; it wants, needs, and therefore results in stagnation or diminution of economic output.

[Aura-bujb]

Then there's the problem of the charitirs often being charities only on paper, and actually serving only the rich. That's capitalism four you all

[maartenmulder]

Thank you for this interesting criticism on the charities that are promoted by the effective altruism movement. I have 2 reflections on your point of view: 1) You argue that development aid should focus on the biggest concerns of people. I do not fully agree with you on that point. Sometimes people are affected by things that are outside of their concerns. For example, nobody cared about sanitary conditions in 19th century Europe and yet improvements on sanitation (imposed on them by others who did not ask whether it was their concern) provided the conditions for huge improvements on health and wellbeing, contributing significantly to our current level of development. 2) Regardless the discussion on addressing existing concerns or not, I agree with you that providing people with free gifts to solve problems is not a good idea from a sustainability perspective. This is also the point made by Dambisa Moyo. This is also my main criticism to AMF. However, they do measure the impact of their programs by measuring net usage and malaria levels and use this information to improve their programs. With this strategy, they are far ahead of most other development organisations and I think they deserve some credit for that.

[brettWwjd]

you should make a video focusing on your experience in the developing country you live in

[SwayZyLSD]

Send these concerns to Peter Singer or to the organizations mentioned and present to us their rebuttals along with your comments. Until you've done that it's hard to treat you as anything more than someone who is simply enjoys skepticism without wanting to have an actual discussion.
This argument is further solidified by the multiple unanswered comments in this video.

[Linck]

have you heard of Schistosomiasis Control Initiative? Do you think they suffer from a similar issue? I really want to donate to something that I can rest assured will have a positive and sustainable impact in the world, but it's a problem to find an institution I can trust. I don't think I'm smart enough to figure out by myself if the way an institution is operating has a positive impact, accounting for all the variables. I understood your argument regarding the malaria foundation, but I'm still skeptical you could have forgotten details about their operations or have not considered other secondary effects. It feels overwhelming to try to look things up and find something that I'm confident of its effectiveness

[Karunainstitute]

Most people in the western world do nothing in terms of incorporating altruism in their lives. I tend to support the idea that the Buddha expressed when asked about how to practice dana, or ethical giving. Essentially, the teaching is to give wisely and skillfully to a cause that your heart directs you to. Doing that, in and of itself, is meritorious. Yet, when philosophers get into the deep weeds of ethics, the discussion seem less ethical and pragmatic, and more masturbatory. "Indeed, Karl Marx once compared philosophy to masturbation, essentially seeing both as privative, idealistic, and impractical activities. Indeed, many lay folk see philosophers as “wankers.” "

What Effective Altruism promotes is a good step. EA draws attention to the idea that charity, or giving, should be founded in wisdom and pragmatism. I also can't fault the arguments of
Carneades.org
too much as well, as they provide intellectual stimulation and exercise, the way that masturbation provides a form of exercise. Yet, ultimately, people that have a sense of ethics and good hearts should study the alternatives when making a decision about charity, and then support causes that do good. To argue that giving mosquito nets to a Burmese refugee village is less ethical than teaching the refugees to weave the nets ( never mind the capital costs of building the factory, or the risk that the plant and equipment will be stolen or destroyed by the Burmese army), is just silly, Some beautifully woven philosophical arguments are just silly, and fully impractical. They might feel good in the moment, and provide some stimulation, but like masturbation, they are eventually unsatisfactory.

[sachamm]

Important video, lots to learn about, thank you. Are you saying/do you think that this extremely common "direct aid" model of intervention _cannot_ work in the long term (even under different circumstances or conditions) because they will all have similar long-term effects? What about the kinds of interventions that emergency organizations like MSF and Red Cross do?

[SunshineInWoods]

Hello! Thanks for the video. However I really do not get the point of you reading what's written on the screen. Wouldn't it be better to write a text and save time for everyone?

[EdwardAveyard]

The speaker keeps talking about the country that he lives in. Where is it? I can't think of any good reason why he wouldn't reveal this. It makes me suspicious that he doesn't want anyone to check the facts over the country that he's talking about.